Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Jeff Mueller's work deals with language. Most often it's readable even when scrambled (knowing the title helps). What precious few examples you can find of his oeuvre fall into two distinct categories. Either he presents us with readable text that's juxtaposed with fascinating images that make the pieces quite thought provoking; you'll find examples of those at the Peter Miller Gallery. Or he's playing around with the words themselves, sometimes turning them into a verbal soup. Those images can be found at the William Campbell Gallery.

I much prefer this latter style, of which these two examples are quite satisfying. His work also strikes a chord with me because on the one hand he lightly touches on the freedom of speech thing by appropriating phrases from public restrooms. And yet in some paintings, he's presenting that to us not as a narrative but as an abstraction whose main appeal is purely compositional.

Both images are from Here, which I assume will be part of his Website, which is under construction at the moment.